Anyone here got any experience with Gentoo on Ultra 5? My Ultra 10 seems to be fine, should I expect any major differences in how I roll-out Gentoo?

An Ultra 5 is just an Ultra 10 in a smaller box. Only real difference is that there's one less PCI slot and no room for a UPA card in the u5. Oh, and officially (haha) Sun don't support the faster CPUs in the u5.

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I noticed that if I emerge PHP, there are quite a lot of X dependencies; anyone got any advice about how to emerge a bare-bones PHP install? What USE flags should I negate?

From the looks of things, -X -qt might be a good start... emerge -pv gives pretty good hints usually.

Just off to pick up an Ultra Enterpise 150 tomorrow. Not sure of the specs but it boots, apparently. I have it on the if you can shift it, it's yours payment plan. My first foray into sun hardware, allmost certainly going to get a stage 1 gentoo installation. However first I have to learn the mysteries of getting the serial console working. I have a bog standard pentium 200, running gentoo 1.4, just crying out to be the console.

@Home - wow I didn't even realize what I had here, I'm a sucker for surplus buys
1 IPC (lunchbox case) no idea what equipment
1 IPX (also a lunchbox) 540 meg drive (set as swap) one 2 gig running
1 Sparc2 - never even opened
RedHat 6.something I think
2 Sparc10's 1 with 256meg Redhat 6.something as well
1 ultraenterprise2 just picked this one up, it will be my home server after I have a chance to Gentoo it
1 Ultra10 - I think this would make a nice web browser mail checker at home.

all in surprisingly good condition, for about US$350 (just under 300 euros).

Latest Gentoo LiveCD booted fine, and installation was a snap. The documentation I referred to, the supposedly "ancient" install doc, the new faq still in bugs.g.o and the Gentoo Handbook are all clearly and well written.

I wisely decided to go with sparc-dev-sources-2.6.3_rc3 for my kernel, that being an obviously much more interesting proposition. The kernel compiled fine (the second time, after including unnecessary ide suppt) and boots and runs perfectly. Users can log in over the net without any trouble at all.

However, no amount of .config options I twiddled and/or fiddle with seem to bring my type 5 (masquerading as a type 6) keyboard to life, despite it working flawlessly under the LiveCD.

This is also a plea to keep this workstation from being beheaded and banished to the realms of slave serverdom.

You need to comment out KEYMAP in /etc/rc.conf with 2.6.x + type5 for it to work properly.

Of course, this is under the sparc-dev-sources kernel. I'm compiling the development-sources as I write this and will try again later ...

Funny thing ... I copied my last .config to the new development-sources, without changing anything else, compiled my kernel and lo and behold, I have a fully working machine *with* keyboard.

After this, I recompiled the kernel *without* ide support, which one would think unnecessary for an ultra 2 machine (sparc-dev-sources 2.6.3-rc3 compiled but wouldn't boot!) and although everything else seems fine, there is no keyboard again

SparcStation IPX (Hobbes):
piece of crap with 16MB of RAM (I think) and no TP ethernet, but I finally got an AUI to TP tranceiver. The HDD died shortly after I brought it home, and now it just sits there doing nothing as I'm working on the SS5 atm. Had to hack together a serial cable for it too.

SparcStaion Classic (Lunch):
32MB RAM that I'll have a play with once I get the SS5 up and running properly.

SparcStation 5 (Pizza):
Currently trying to install Gentoo on it as I write. Trying to go from Stage 1, but after chrooting, I try to 'emerge sync' but keep getting a Seg Fault when it gets to the ">>> Updating Portage Cache..." bit. grrr
This is one of those 170MHz TurboSparc processors btw, I'm just seeing if I can get Gentoo on it. I may have to go from stage 3...
and it *definitely* needs more RAM. Only 64MB in it at the moment, but finding it in Australia is not easy.

I also have a HP9000 721/60 (Gecko) with Debian installed, but I haven't got a second ethernet card for it so it does nothing at the moment.

I hope to acquire an UltraSparc of some sort as well._________________Gentoo Noob

So far:
**Edit**
Ultra2e
2x 300Mhz USII 2mb cache
384mb ram
9Gb internal
12x 4gb in a multipack
40x cdrom in external drivebay
Currently running solaris 9, but soon upgrading to gentoo.
Creator3d (managed to find one in an old u1 we had lying around at work)
quad ethernet

And then, I have found that eBay can be your friend if you are patient;
just keep looking for any of X3661A, X3671A, 501-4790, ...
and keep waiting. (For example, if you wanted an old Creator, series 1 for
a U2, that's what eBay item 3083583067 is: 501-4127. I doubt that you want it.)

Essentially, you are looking for Creator3D Series 3 (FFB2+(H)) or Series 2 (FFB2(H))
H=Horizontal; the only thing to watch out for is that the (V)=Vertical parts are more common,
so always check against the part number list on the sun page referenced above.

And then, I have found that eBay can be your friend if you are patient;
just keep looking for any of X3661A, X3671A, 501-4790, ...
and keep waiting. (For example, if you wanted an old Creator, series 1 for
a U2, that's what eBay item 3083583067 is: 501-4127. I doubt that you want it.)

Essentially, you are looking for Creator3D Series 3 (FFB2+(H)) or Series 2 (FFB2(H))
H=Horizontal; the only thing to watch out for is that the (V)=Vertical parts are more common,
so always check against the part number list on the sun page referenced above.

Hope this gives you an idea of what to look for.

Thanks for your help... found some stuff on ebay, but so far US only shipping (I'm UK based).